10 Data Scraping and Web Scraping Tools You Must Discover

When talking about web scraping, we think about the entire process, from choosing a website to saving data in a specific format. However, many steps are to be followed in the back-end, most of them unknown even to some developers.

It doesn’t matter if you are a developer in a business that wants to know everything about their competition or the company’s owner. The power of web scraping will give you a hundred solutions to help you collect the data necessary to reach your goals.

But what do you choose between all the options available on the market? Which one is the best to meet your needs and will fit your requirements?

Find out the answers to these questions by discovering the top 10 web scraping and data scraping tools presented in the lines below.

1. WebScrapingAPI
2. Diffbot
3. Octoparse
4. Parsehub
5. Dexi.io
6. WebScraper
7. WebHarvy
8. Zyte
9. Mozenda
10. Import.io

What will you find out about each data scraping or web scraping tool?

There are many tools out there when it comes to data or web scraping, each built to meet their users’ different needs. Whether it’s developers who want to build web scrapers or users who want to wield them without coding, there is something for everybody.

Thus, let us present you the 10 tool options you must discover: from APIs to enterprise solutions. Find out to whom each product is recommended, where it can be used, what functionalities each tool offers, and what price category it belongs to.

Let’s start!

1. WebScrapingAPI

WebScrapingAPI is part of the product category, essential to any developer. As its name suggests, it is a web scraping API that you can access immediately with a simple and free account creation. What makes it a very good product translates into the following benefits: it is easy to use, reliable, and can be customized on request. Everything to help you get rid of the classic and challenging process of obtaining the desired data.

Recommended for: users with technical knowledge (web developers, data scientists, big data developers, software developers, etc.), companies with an in-house development team.

Use cases: price intelligence (information about price and products), financial data, market research, real estate, lead generation, etc.

Why you should check it out: WebScrapingAPI allows you to scrape any online source, managing all possible blockers under the hood. Therefore, you won’t have to deal with CAPTCHAs, proxies, or IP rotations. It collects the HTML from any web page using a simple API. Moreover, you can customize many aspects of your requests, such as headers, geotargeting, and much more. WebScrapingAPI is part of the Freemium price category. However, the tool offers the possibility to test all service packages for free and upgrade your plan anytime. Because of the 1000 free requests offered, you can start testing at any time by creating a free account on the WebScrapingAPI website.

2. Diffbot

Diffbot is a tool that uses machine learning to transform any online information into structured and accessible data. Thus, Diffbot is quite different from other web scraping software out there. It uses computer vision (instead of HTML parsing) to locate the related details on a page. With the help of this tool, you will be able to extract structured data from any article, product page, discussion, image, or video from any web page without coding.

Recommended for: users with technical knowledge (web developers, data scientists, big data developers, software developers, etc.), tech companies, enterprises with specific crawling and screen scraping needs.

Use cases: market intelligence, e-commerce, news, and media monitoring, machine learning, etc.

Why you should check it out: Diffbot is a tool dedicated to those who want to avoid the in-house development of a web scraper, mainly because the websites are constantly changing. Through easy integration and their automatic extraction API, Diffbot has you covered. Some of the product’s key features that fall into the premium price category with high price ranges are multiple structured APIs that return structured data, Javascript execution for full pages rendering, normalized HTML returnings, multi-language page handling, and integrated web crawler APIs.

3. Octoparse

Octoparse is a tool for those who want to scrape the web quickly and easily without coding. However, the product allows you to stay in control of the entire data extraction process, thanks to the user-friendly interface. With Octoparse, you can extract the needed data in simple steps: access the URL of the website you want to scrape, click on the target data, and extract.

Recommended for: users without coding knowledge, business owners, companies with specific scraping needs, etc.

Use cases: product intelligence, real estate, reviews, e-commerce, market research, lead generation, etc.

Why you should check it out: Octoparse is a visual website scraping tool, which is, on the one hand, very easy to understand. It allows you to export the extracted data in different formats such as CVS, Excel or send it directly to an API or database. On the other hand, the tool includes interesting features such as cloud services that allow you to extract large amounts of data. Octoparse is one of the freemium products available on the market with accessible service packages.

4. Parsehub

Parsehub is an easy-to-use visual data extraction tool. It’s handy for users without coding knowledge who just want to use a pre-built software and scrape even the most outdated websites. Whatever system you are running, whether it’s Windows, Linux, or Mac, you can use this tool without any problems. The scraping process itself happens on the Parsehub servers, so you just only have to follow the instructions within the app.

Recommended for: analysts, researchers, journalists, media companies, consultants, etc.

Use cases: market research, lead generation, new and media monitoring, specific industries (statistics and insights), e-commerce, social media, etc.

Why you should check it out: Parsehub allows you to extract data as easily as clicking on the section you need by using their advanced and powerful web scraper. It has many useful functions, such as automated IP rotation, cloud-based store services, scheduled web scraping. Moreover, it recognizes the most complex documents using machine learning tech and offers JSON, Excel, and API formatted data. Parsehub is a freemium tool. So you can test it anytime for free, but you can always choose a package with a higher price for complex benefits to meet your goals and needs.

5. Dexi.io

Dexi.io is a visual web scraping tool that allows you to extract data from any website. It requires no download and facilitates smart extraction solutions for many industries. It offers various types of robots for different needs. Their web scraping process involves automatic rotating proxies to increase success chances. It is easy to use, too. You just have to follow some simple steps: choose the type of robot you need, enter the website you want to extract web data from, and start scraping.

Recommended for: business owners, researchers, marketers, managers, users without technical knowledge, etc.

Use cases: digital commerce intelligence, retail, e-commerce, market research, price and product information, lead generation, financial field, etc.

Why you should check it out: Some of the great features of Dexi.io that make the tool flexible and easy-to-use are disparate data collection, extraction of email addresses, images, pricing, documents, IP addresses, web data, and much more. It is very easy to integrate and has a modular interface that is incredibly adaptable to building out just about any custom tool you may need. Dexi runs all the built web automation robots, so you won’t have to set up a server or scheduler by yourself. Dexi.io also offers several integrations with third-party services. You can export all the data you scrape in JSON or CSV formats. When it comes to pricing, the tool provides a free trial which you can turn into a paid plan.

6. WebScraper

WebScraper belongs to the category of web scraping extension-type products. It is one of the most popular Chrome extensions. If you want to scrape the web as simple as possible, you just have to install it, configure your scraper, and start extracting data from any website. The tool is specially built for the modern web, precisely for websites built on top of JavaScript frameworks that are less accessible to scrapers.

Recommended for: users without technical knowledge, marketers, researchers, analysts, business owners, business strategists, managers, brand owners, and anyone in between.

Use cases: e-commerce, competition research, lead generation, brand monitoring, price intelligence and data collection, business intelligence, retail monitoring, etc.

Why you should check it out: Using WebScraper, there are only a few steps you need to follow to learn how to become a web scraping expert. From simple features to some advanced ones, the browser extension offers the opportunity to scrape data from multiple pages (text, images, URLs, and more), browse scraped data, download data in a CSV file that can be further imported into Excel, Google Sheets, or even completely automate data extraction through cloud services. Being a browser extension, you don’t have to worry about technical knowledge. Even though the extension is free, Web Scraper also offers more complex, paid service packages.

7. WebHarvy

WebHarvy is an intuitive and powerful visual web scraping tool. It is a desktop application that can scrape websites locally, which means that the entire scraping process will run on your computer, not on a cloud server. What makes this product an easy-to-use tool is that you don’t have to create any code. WebHarvy’s inbuilt browser interface allows loading websites and selecting data to scrape with a few mouse clicks.

Recommended for: marketers, researchers, analysts, e-commerce companies, business owners, sales managers, real estate agents, SEO specialists, etc.

Use cases: price and product intelligence and comparison, e-commerce, real estate, market research and analysis, social media, marketing, lead generation, competition monitoring, etc.

Why you should check it out: WebHarvy is a handy tool for easy and fast web scraping. The tool’s key features include intelligent pattern detection, multiple page crawling, keywords submitting, safeguard privacy, category scraping, application of regular expressions, javaScript support, and export in various formats (Excel, XML, CSV, JSON, TSV), and much more. Its visual scraping features allow you to define extraction rules just like Octoparse and Parsehub. In terms of pricing, you can test it for free, but also choose a one-time payment plan according to your needs.

8. Zyte

Formerly known as Scrapinghub, Zyte boasts of being a game-changer in data extraction, eager to remove the obstacles that users face when they want to access valuable data. With a great stand-alone products list, Zyte can offer a complete web scraping solution to any user without coding hassles, bans, blockers, or broken spiders. Their products are simply characterized by power and ease of use in collecting, formatting, and delivering quick, dependable, and at-scale web data.

Recommended for: big companies with specific scraping needs, users without technical knowledge, researchers, analysts, business owners, business strategists, managers, brand owners, marketers, etc.

Use cases: finance, price intelligence, product building, news and media monitoring, brand monitoring, market research, recruitment. etc.

Why you should check it out: Zyte offers a variety of products that make the web scraping process easier. On the one hand, they cover data extraction services to build data extraction solutions and automatic extraction services. That means they theoretically do the job. All you have to give them is the URL you want to access and scrape. On the other hand, they also offer separate proxy management services. Whatever you might need, they might have got you covered. In terms of prices, Zyte products are part of the paid category, but they offer you a free 14-day trial.

9. Mozenda

Mozenda is the ideal tool for enterprises looking for platforms with a very high data extraction capacity. It is a cloud-based platform with a user-friendly interface that can create and host a web scraper for you. It has two components: an application to build a project to extract data and a web console to run agents, organize outputs, and export data. As it has a high learning curve, the tool requires more than basic coding knowledge to use it.

Recommended for: users with technical knowledge (web developers, data scientists, big data developers, software developers, etc.), big companies, enterprises with specific crawling and screen scraping needs.

Use cases: large-scale price monitoring, market research, competitor monitoring, real estate, retail, marketing, healthcare, consultancy, etc.

Why you should check it out: If you are in the situation of choosing a platform that supports the extraction of a large volume of data, Mozenda may be the right choice for you. The tool has features like simultaneous processing, premium harvesting, API access, agent constriction templates, free phone and email support, job sequencer, and request blocking. You can export data in CSV, XML, JSON, or XLSX formats, and much more. Finally, Mozenda falls into the category of premium products, yet with flexible price offers for any need.

10. Import.io

Import.io is an enterprise web scraping platform, a tool designed for large companies with needs to extract large volumes of web data. With a point-and-click interface, you can transform any website into data, even if it uses Javascript. It lets you select the required information, and data can be integrated into apps or analytics with APIs or webhooks. As such, the tool offers one of the most user-friendly web extraction solutions.

Recommended for: users with technical knowledge (web developers, data scientists, big data developers, software developers, etc.), big companies, enterprises with specific scraping needs.

Use cases: e-commerce, product and price intelligence, retail and manufacturing, financial, insurance, equity research, marketing, sales, etc.

Why you should check it out: Import.io provides a flexible, extensible platform with deep capabilities. It allows enterprises to make better decisions by gaining insights from robust alternative data sets. As a cloud-based data integration platform, it enables you to extract, prepare, and integrate unstructured data into structured data tables. Moreover, it contains a built-in crawl service specifically designed to handle multiple URL queries. Price-related, you must schedule a consultation for a personalized offer on their website. However, review sites place the tool in the category of premium products with high price packages.

Final Thoughts

That was quite a list and some valuable information!

Congratulations on getting here and being interested in all the information related to the 10 data scraping and web scraping tools worth discovering. We hope this blog post was very useful. Before ending, let us summarize what we have learned from this research.

What have we learned from the presentation of the 10 scraping data and web scraping tools?

• It is essential to set your goals and define your needs when it comes to web scraping.
• To discover the necessary tool, you need to see who it is for and identify with that person.
• Find out if this tool falls into your use case category.
• Make sure the features of the tool help you achieve your goals.
• Test the tool if possible, or make sure the investment you make is a head start.

Bonus overview, to make the best tool choice 👇

Lastly, if you want to find out more information about web scraping products and tools or learn about data extraction in general, you can find much more on our blog. Check it out!